The White House has proposed increasing Puerto Rico’s Nutrition Assistance Program (NAP) by $72 million in the coming 2026 fiscal year.
The appendix to the Fiscal Year 2026 budget proposal shared by the White House last week contains details and builds on the Fiscal Year 2026 Discretionary Budget Request first shared with Congress on May 2, 2025.
Page 157 of the 1224-page supplementary document contains a line item for Nutrition Assistance for Puerto Rico and sets forth the program’s 2024 final budget ($2.916 billion), the program’s estimated budget for 2025 ($2.922 billion) and proposed budget for 2026 $2.994 billion).
It is now up to Congress to prepare and enact a package of bills to fund the U.S. government for the coming fiscal year, to be sent to the President for his signature.
Nutrition Assistance in Puerto Rico
While the national Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) reimburses states for their food expenditures for needy residents, Puerto Rico has a capped amount, which is less than the U.S. territory would receive under SNAP. Puerto Rico must try to meet the needs of residents with these limited funds.
Puerto Rico was originally included in the primary U.S. nutrition assistance program. In 1982, however, as a cost-cutting measure, Puerto Rico was dropped, even though the U.S. Virgin Islands is still included in the federal program.
Congress considered reintegrating Puerto Rico back into the federal nutrition assistance program during the 2018 renewal of the major U.S. agriculture and nutrition law, but, at the time, a transition was deemed premature. Instead, the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) was tasked with conducting a review of changes needed to convert NAP to SNAP and develop a detailed implementation plan for establishing SNAP in Puerto Rico.
USDA’s final report and related implementation plan concluded that Puerto Rico is capable of transitioning back into the federal system, moving from NAP to SNAP, provided that it is given the time and resources to do so.
In recent years, progress has been made to reinstate Puerto Rico back into the nationwide program. On May 1, U.S. Senate Agriculture Committee Chairwoman Debbie Stabenow (D-MI) called for Puerto Rico’s re-inclusion in SNAP in her proposed Rural Prosperity and Food Security Act, a legislative initiative that sought to reauthorize major national agriculture programs, most notably federal nutrition assistance. The bill did not pass Congress, and the related reauthorization remains pending.
At a U.S. Senate Agriculture Committee hearing in March 2024, United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) Secretary Tom Vilsack stated that he saw Puerto Rico’s reintegration into SNAP as “certainly in the foreseeable future.” A USDA publication four months later explained that “USDA continues to support a successful transition from NAP to SNAP once Congress opens up this pathway.”
Congress Considers Equality for Puerto Rico in Nutrition Assistance
